Category Sleeping

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It is cosy in front of the fire. Jossan is enjoying the warmth lying between Electra and Leroy ❤

She still has appetite and a strong will to live. It is cold outside and she cannot go out, but the fireplace in the evenings and sun in the windows during our short days are very popular in our cat pride.

There are several sofas, cat beds and various pillows spread through the house to choose from, but Jossan wants to sleep on the very sheep that Claire occupied first. Claire will of course not move and leave her sheep.

So what happens is that everyone sleeps on the sheep. But – there is place only for one cat there, or so I thought. And I was wrong.

I wanted sleeping sacks for our cats since I saw the pink one on the pictures that Casper’s new Mom sent me. Casper is called Imre now and he lives with two Burmese ladies, Daphne and Octavia and one Cornish Rex boy, Matteo. 🙂

Matteo, Daphne and Imre (ex Casper) curled up in their sleeping sack. Pictures by their Mom Désirée

Looong legs!

Yesterday they finally arrived, our own sleeping sacks from Germany, http://www.katzen-deko.de/ , our favorite place for buying cat furniture! At first the cats were skeptical and more interested in a cardboard package than the sacks themselves. But today when I woke up, I found them in the blue room, sleeping like this:

Jossan and Miii

The Siamese pile; Leroy, Albert, Miii and Jossan. Claire is in my arms, ‘helping’ me hold the phone and take pictures. Maven is sleeping upstairs, she is not too fond of cat piles.

I waited for about a month for the sacks to arrive! That was pretty long. I ordered those two (the first one is on the pictures): big sleeping bag and shell shaped tipi

Miii in particular is very fond of hiding under blankets, and I guessed correctly she will be the one most pleased with the sacks. And she is! The other (mussel shaped) tipi could easily hold two cats, but she kicks out the other ones out. Bad Miii! She really likes the new beds.

Saturday afternoon at our home. It has been raining all day and it is already dark outside (it is 6 PM here). There is a whole 2 months left until Christmas but it already feels like the holidays are around the corner!

The heating is on, and our ‘furry lizards’, how Jocke called them, the pride of Siamese, are lying close to the radiator, the beloved source of warmth. 🙂 Maven with her fluffy semi-long fur does not feel the cold, she is lying in another window, looking at the street.

Albert is going to have surgery tomorrow at Buba’s. The bone he dislocated in April did not jump back and it is risky to have it stay that way; he risks a possibly serious injury if he runs into something with his chest. Also, he is not comfortable (even less than usual) being lifted. We hope the surgery goes well.

They are small kittens, and we must feed them after midnight as well! They eat wet food several times a day, and their dry food is always in the bowls. There is no help – they are growing and need to eat, so the food must always be available. Am, whose fault is it that they turned to gremlins and just stayed that way?!

Little gremlins. They are looking at you.

This is how it looks after they all got tired and fell asleep in different places in the living room after running around for hours.

Yesterday we woke up surprised with 15 cm of snow outside! It was snowing and snowing. Today almost all of it melted. The spring is fighting its way to Stockholm, but this winter is not giving up easily!

Albert is better. I gave him the last dose of his medication last night and he does not seem to be in pain at all anymore. He is lively and a active as usual. He is not swollen in the chest area, and the bruising is gone. The bone is still protruding, but it feels a bit less. He is okay with me examining him and even pressing the bone slightly, but he does not like to be lifted (he was never crazy about it, but now it is even less okay than before). But he is jumping everywhere and does not sleep as much as when he was in pain.

We will go to Buba in a week or two and see what can be done, and if anything should be done at all. If he does not have pain, behaves as usual, can do everything as before, and runs no higher risk of another injury, we will probably not have him operated. That is how we reason now. We will see.

Here is Albert taking a nap next to his aunt Miii.

Albert and Miii taking a nap

A few meters from them, Jossan and Leroy are resting.

Leroy and Jossan. New summer curtains and a winter landscape in the background.

Does Jossan look a bit chubby to you?

Jossan, 35 days to go, getting a bit rounder

She is not chubby! She is pregnant and slowly gaining some weight. 🙂 We expect kittens around May 19, and the dad is the same as to A and B litters; it is Albert’s and his siblings’ dad Goofy. Everything is going well so far. Jossan is fine and in spite of Albert being in total center of attention last week, she still got a lot of love and time alone with me. All cats have their special places and time with us, no one gets neglected.

Last year I took a week off when Jossan got kittens, this year Jocke planned one week vacation in the second half of May, to help Jossan at start and be there all the time with her and the small ones. I’ll of course also be with her for the delivery.

Maven fell asleep on the top of the back of one of the kitchen chairs!

I took a picture carefuly trying not to wake her up and scare her. I did not want her to fall!

It happens that some of the cats fall asleep on an odd place now and then. It also happened a couple of times that we heard a thud, ran to the source of noise and found one of our sleepy kitties completely confused, looking up at us from the floor, wondering what just happened! Luckily those things do not happen too often.

The kittens turned 11 weeks today! They are so big now. Next week they are getting their second vaccine and in two-four weeks they will be moving to their new homes. The feelings are mixed. They are all moving to very good homes and we are looking forward to see how it goes for them in the future.

This is how the beginning of our evening with the kittens looked like (it is Stockholm, and summer, it is still not completely dark yet).

In the living room, Leroy was sleeping on one of his sheep

While in another room, the kittens were slowly waking up from their afternoon nap (Bea, Blanche and Jossan is behind them)

It is hard to see the gender of the kittens when they are this small, but now I think that there is only one boy, white or lilac, and three girls – one white, and two dark ones – seal or blue or chocolate. But we cannot be certain either about gender or color until they are about three weeks old.

In a few days they will start opening their eyes. For now they are just getting rounder. 🙂

Siamese kittens are born white. They may look all white and pink to you on the pictures, but you probably notice that some of them have started getting dark ear edges and nose tips. They will fully develop their point color as they get older.

The pointed Siamese pattern is a result of the partial albinism gene. The point restricted pattern is bound to an enzyme which, when exposed to temperatures above 37°C, causes the hair root to produce little or no pigment for the growing hair. That is why the Siamese kittens are born completely white – it is very warm in mom’s belly!

The neck and the body of the cat are warmer and don’t develop any or little pigment at adult Siamese. Their point color is restricted to the areas of the body that are cooler, such as the face, ears, legs, and tail. But, if your Siamese is a bit overweight, a layer of fat works as an insulator and the cat can become darker in its body also!

The kittens are almost two days old and they are growing before our eyes.

We weighed them this evening and three of them went 20 gr up already and one went up 28gr! Jossan is so proud of them, and the big cats come and sit and watch the small ones few times per day, from a meter or two of distance.

I wonder what Albert is thinking… he is so excited, and scared and curious at the same time. He can just sit and calmly watch his mom and his small siblings for hours.

Jocke took a few pretty pictures of Jossan today. Her tummy is a bit shaved because of the ultrasound exam. Pretty cat! :*

Look at that profile!

Also, we got some exciting news from Norway. Three weeks after Arwen’s and Albert’s date, there are the signs! Arwen’s tummy is getting rounder, and her nipples turned a stronger shade of pink. Look at the pretty tummy pictures here!

Jossan’s tummy is getting bigger. The ultrasound showed 5-6 babies, but it is hard to see exactly how many there are. They were so cute! Little kittens, moving a bit. One looked like he was waving to us with his small paws!

Jossan, Miii and Albert are resting in the sun. Albert is hardly visible, he fits the background so well.

There is 38 days left until the kittens arrive, if everything goes well. Jossan is going up in weight just fine, 430gr since the start of the pregnancy.

She was clumsy and quite active lately and played and rolled on the floor with the toys, and even fell once (10 days ago) from a shelf, but she still continued going up in weight really well and shows no signs of discomfort at all. We are going for a checkup and an ultrasound exam in 2 days (on Tuesday).

A month ago we bought a sheep-shaped soft pillow that caused a lot of excitement in our cat group. It is funny with cats. Sometimes you buy them a toy you are certain they will love, but they do not care about it all. At other times, some, in your eyes, very boring thing becomes an immediate hit. We thought they might like the sheep, but we did not expect that it will be so popular. (We bought the sheep in Chilli, they have a store close to where we live).

Maven was the first to hug, pet and take care of her sheep friend. She would clean herself, walk all over the sheep, put it in the right shape and then sleep on it or beside it.

But, then, Leroy also liked the sheep. He was jealous of Maven and stole the sheep whenever he could.

Leroy also loves the sheep

Then the other cats wanted the sheep as well.

After a few weeks of occasional quarreling about the sheep, we went and bought them 3 more sheep! One in beige color as the first one, and two white ones. Of course, NO ONE wanted any sheep when there were so many around, but after a few days, everyone loves sheep again.

Maven really likes our new house, it is big and it is messy (for now). Oh, joy!

Maven is a black smoke cat (her fur is warm in tone in the autumn, since she spends a lot of time in the sun in the summer, and the fur gets lighter), and here you can also see that the bottom half of her fur is completely white! (The silver gene makes it white). If we would shave off the tips of Maven fur, she would be mostly white! 🙂

The tummies are full, and the kittens are all sleeping. Notice one small nose coming out of the pile in the background. 🙂

The tipi is becoming too small for Jossan and her seven kittens. We ordered a bigger tipi two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Jossan does not want her children to sleep in a cat bed without a roof. Instinctive fear of predator birds, we guess, and also, it is much warmer in the tipi than it would be in a bed without a roof. Jossan refuses to move into cardboard boxes with blankets inside; she likes luxurious stuff. Spoiled!